N.F.L. Owners Unanimously Revamp Catch Rule. Fumbles to Follow.

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A play in which Dez Bryant of the Dallas Cowboys caught the ball near the goal line in a 2014 playoff game against the Green Bay Packers helped start a debate that led to a rewriting of the N.F.L.’s catch rule for the 2018 season.CreditAndrew Weber/USA TODAY Sports, via Reuters

ORLANDO, Fla. — The N.F.L. believes it has finally figured out one of the most basic aspects of football: what is a catch.

In hopes of clarifying what has consistently been one of its most frustrating on-field issues, the league announced on Tuesday that as part of several adopted proposals from the league’s competition committee it had redefined, and hopefully simplified, what constitutes a catch. But the door was certainly left open for future debate.

In the simplest terms, a player has to catch the ball, land in bounds, and then do something that demonstrates he has control of the ball.

The new definition is similar in spirit to what was previously on the books, but both the main rule and its attached notes were rewritten significantly in hopes of clarifying things for players, officials and fans. The terminology now states that a catch will have occurred if a player, who is in bounds:

(a) secures control of the ball in his hands or arms before the ball touches the ground; and

(b) touches the ground inbounds with both feet or with any part of his body other than his hands; and

(c) after (a) and (b) have been fulfilled, performs any act common to the game (e.g., tucks the ball away, extends it toward or over the goal line or the first-down line, takes an additional step, turns upfield, or avoids or wards off an opponent), or maintains control of the ball long enough to do so.

The N.F.L. removed the stipulation that a player who has satisfied those three criteria must also survive “going to the ground” with the ball. A player will only have to survive the ground if he has yet to satisfy category (c).

The new rule, which was approved by owners with a vote of 32-0, is an attempt to do away with the kinds of baroque rulings that nullified apparent catches by Calvin Johnson of the Detroit Lions in 2010, Dez Bryant of the Dallas Cowboys in 2014 and Jesse James of the Pittsburgh Steelers last season.

James, who still believes his catch should have been a touchdown, said the changes should help the game be called more consistently.

“Clarification is good for the officials,” he told Steelers.com on Tuesday. “The past few years it’s been clear they don’t know what they are calling.”

The sticking point, though, regardless of how many spectacular touchdowns are preserved, could prove to be the issue of fumbles. The “going to the ground” language was introduced to the N.F.L. rule book in 1982 with the goal of eliminating what had become a disturbing trend of fumbles at the end of catches, and this week’s change could inadvertently bring that problem back in full force.

At a news conference on Monday announcing the proposed changes, Al Riveron, the N.F.L.’s senior vice president of officiating, acknowledged that significantly changing the “going to the ground” language would most likely mean an uptick in fumbles, but he said that fan pressure was involved in the decision making.

“Are we going to see more fumbles? Maybe,” Riveron said. “We want to make these catches catches. That’s what the fans want.”

Rich McKay, the president of the Atlanta Falcons, said that he would trade 10 more fumbles for five more memorable catches, and that the league’s history of tweaking the catch rule had led to far too much confusion, necessitating a total overhaul of how catches are handled.

“We needed to start over,” he said. “It got to us, we need to get objective standards.”

Riveron and McKay acknowledged that it was Bryant’s overturned catch that started the debate leaguewide, but the volume was turned up after Commissioner Roger Goodell vowed to fix things.

“I think we can clarify this rule,” Goodell said at his annual news conference before the Super Bowl. “With a lot of hard work, focus, get to a place where — I’m not going to say there won’t be controversy — but we can get to a better place. We have a great opportunity to get this thing right.”

Owners said they would still brace for controversial calls. but predicted there would be fewer of them.

“This rule change is not gonna solve every single issue, you’re still going to have a certain amount of subjectivity,” said John Mara, the president of the Giants.

The league also changed language to try to curb dangerous hits that make use of a player’s helmet, altering the rule book in two places. Under the section on unnecessary roughness, it removes the necessity that contact with a helmet be initiated “violently or uneccessarily” and simply bans the practice outright. In the section on initiating contact with the crown of the helmet, the proposal drastically simplifies matters. It now reads “USE OF THE HELMET: It is a foul if a player lowers his head to initiate and make contact with his helmet against an opponent.”

Benjamin Hoffman contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: The N.F.L. Figures Out Exactly What a Catch Is. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe